I'll just introduce myself. My name is Sharon Rudderham and I'm the health director of Eskasoni First Nation.
Eskasoni is the largest first nation or Mi'kmaq community east of Montreal, in Nova Scotia. It has a population of 4,500 people. Half of our population, about 2,200, are young people in our community, so we have a significant youth population.
As you know, I'm here today to talk about long-term care and the needs related to it. We know that the impacts of the Indian residential school system have created an unwillingness by our people to access long-term care services outside of our communities. They prefer for services to be provided within our communities.
We've been working collaboratively with the Province of Nova Scotia in trying to resolve what we believe to be discriminatory policies that exclude provision of care to first nations people within Nova Scotia.
I also want to reference in my presentation—and I'm not sure if you're aware—that when the Health Council of Canada did a research study in 2012 and surveyed aboriginal people across this country, they found that aboriginal people feel fearful, powerless, and discriminated against, and have little trust in the public health system as it exists outside of our first nations communities.
I want to reference some data specific to our communities here in Nova Scotia. This data comes from what's called the Nova Scotia First Nations Client Linkage Registry. It's a unique identifier that allows first nations to extract data from provincial data sources. This was done through an agreement with our provincial government and our first nations communities.
Death before the age of 75 is considered premature. Between 2004 and 2013, 80% of deaths in our first nations communities were considered premature in comparison to the rate for Nova Scotia, which was only 30% premature deaths.
As you all know, the rates of diabetes are significant in our communities, with the rate almost double or triple the provincial diabetes rates.
I know we have limited time. I have some statistics. I'm referencing the importance and need around chronic disease management and the supports that we need to have in place and in process within our communities to support our population affected by these diseases.
Looking at heart attacks and heart failure, within our first nations communities the median age of someone who has a heart attack is 56. In Nova Scotia, the average age is 69. For heart failure, the average age was 67 years compared to 78 years for Nova Scotia overall.
You're probably wondering where I'm going with this. It's to give you an example of the need and the differences that exist between aboriginal and non-aboriginal communities. We do have a young population in our communities, but we have higher rates of chronic disease and disability that are being created because of these high rates of chronic disease.
We have small numbers around Alzheimer's and dementia, but when we look at the premature death rate that exists, if 80% of the people in our communities die before the age of 75, people are not getting diagnosed and not reaching those ages in the same manner that the entire country is reaching those ages and filling our long-term care facilities.